
Class r(^K 



IlJ^' 



3 






MR. FRANCIS' 



AT PLYMOUTH. 



DISCOURSE 



DELIVERED AT PliYMOUTH, MASS. DEC. 22, 1832, 



IN COMMEMORATION OP THE 



LANDING OF THE FATHERS 



BTT COITVERS TRAVtCIS, 

CONGREGATIONAL MINISTER OF WATERTOWN. 



PUBLISHED BY REQUEST OF THE COMMITTEE OF THE FIRST PARISH. 



PLYMOUTH : 

PRINTED BY ALLEN DANFORTH. 



1832. 



J2\ 



Bob. Athen 

Mar 98 06 
IN SXCHAKOl 



P> 



7^' 



SERMON. 



John iv. 38. 

OTHER MEN LABOURED, AND YE ARE ENTERED INTO THEIR 

LABOURS. 

There is a meaning involved in these words 
not inappropriate to the present occasion. Jesus 
reminds his disciples of the foundation already 
laid for the labors, on which they would enter in 
the exercise of their office as his ministers. In 
doing this, he uses expressions that may be ap- 
plied in a general sense to the relation, in which 
all men stand to those who have gone before them 
in the way of duty, enterprise, or suffering. 

We devote this day to the memory of our Fa- 
thers. It is theirs, and not our own. There is a 
spirit of fellowship in the occasion, which recre- 
ates the heart. Whatever may be the strife or 
toil, to which we are called elsewhere, here we 
come together in the tie of a common relation to 
a past age and a past generation. As dutiful chil- 
dren we are willing, I trust, to hush every unkind 
or unworthy feeling, while we stand in the pre- 
sence of the patriarchs of New-England. I 
would not do wrong to this anniversary by bring- 
ing it to bear on the passing disputes of our day. 
Let this ground at least, first trodden by the feet 



4 

of the Pilgrim Fathers, be dedicated to peaceful 
and elevated considerations. Let it be to us 
what Elis was to Greece of old, a territory which 
was never suffered to be the scene of war, where 
Greeks of hostile States became for the time bro- 
thers, where soldiers laid down their arms, and re- 
sumed them not till they had left the consecrated 
region. 

The story belonging to this day has been so 
often and so well told, and the reflections it awak- 
ens have been set forth in so many forms of elo- 
quence and piety, that every fit topic may seem 
to be exhausted. I am encouraged, however, 
with the belief that our interest in the Fathers is 
not of a nature to grow old, and that he who 
speaks of them, though feebly and inadequately, 
has that in his subject which will supply in some 
degree his own poverty or defects. Indeed the 
simple and somewhat rude annals of the first days 
of New-England must gather a continually in- 
creasing attractiveness, as the distance lengthens 
through which we look back upon them, and as 
the consequences of the movement then made in 
the world's affairs, and so little regarded at the 
time, are more thoroughly or more extensively 
developed. It may be true that, strictly speak- 
ing, antiquity is yet a word almost without mean- 
ing among us. Our community in the utmost 
extent of its history is comparatively but a young 
community, and our oldest age but a green age.* 
When we look at nations, who count the years on 
their annals by thousands, whose land is covered 

Sec Appendix A 



with remnants that point to a period beyond ilic 
reach of authentic story, with fallen columns or 
shattered monuments, still forming in their mel- 
ancholy beauty a magical connexion between the 
present moment and the days of classical antiqui- 
ty, we seem as it were in the childhood of our 
existence as a distinct people, and are made to 
feel that when we speak of our Fathers we speak 
of modern men. But such is the rapidity, with 
which the generations of mankind rush down 
through the gates of death, that the venerable 
strangeness of olden times has grown over the 
deeds and characters of the men, who two hun- 
dred and twelve years ago, here took the wilder- 
ness for their portion. Such are the revolutions 
of taste, customs, and opinions, that between 
them and us a space is already interposed, in 
some respects apparently as wide, as if it were 
measured by the course of half the ages in man's 
history, and that even two centuries are sufficient 
to excite the associations, the conjectures, and the 
reverend interest, which belong to antiquity. 

It may be thought, perhaps, that the scenes and 
the days commemorated on this anniversary are 
not sufficiently great or brilliant to require or sus- 
tain these frequent calls upon our attention. It 
may be thought, that the filial duty of celebrating 
the Fathers has been already overdone, and that 
the humble adventure of the New-England set- 
tlement is, at the best, but a meagre and barren 
story. The present, with its boasted improve- 
ments, iis restless spirit of activity, its great 
achievcmcnls and still greaier promises, presses 



6 

upon us with a power so stirring and absorbing, 
that the past, with its poor and unimposing ap- 
pearance, may seem worthy only to be consign- 
ed to the curious industry of the speculative anti- 
quarian. But it is a weak philosophy, which 
overlooks or despises the day of small things. — 
The record of the Plymouth settlers seems to me 
the more attractive, because it is the record of 
poverty and of humble efforts. There is some- 
thing refreshing to the spirit in stealing away, as 
it were, from the imposing greatness of the top- 
ics and events that now crowd upon the mind 
with even painful interest, to the quiet and nar- 
row spot in history occupied by the devoted pil- 
grims, steadfast and unbroken in their wants, 
their loneliness, and their sorrows. And when 
we turn from the picture of our republic as it now 
is, its apparent destiny as a new and mighty ele- 
ment of influence on the condition of man, the im- 
portant attitude which, with a rapidity almost 
miraculous, it has assumed among the nations, 
the gigantic results of its untired enterprise, its 
tide of population ever rolling on and pouring it- 
self through the vallies and around the rivers of 
the West, — when we turn from such a survey to 
that little band who sought an asylum on this 
winterbeaten shore, we must look upon them with 
any thing but indifference; we must feel that 
there is a fascination in this scene of depression 
and of unpretending perseverance in a good cause, 
w^iich takes from it, even in the 'eye of the mere 
man of taste, all appearance of coarseness or lit- 
tleness. It seems rather to be just the scene on 



which the mind loves to repose, not tame nor 
spiritless, yet undisturbed by the glare of a migh- 
ty and prosperous community. Travellers tell 
us that they have felt even more pleasure, when 
standing in solitude by the small sources of rivers 
that sweep their long course through flourishing 
and fertile lands, than when gazing on the outlets 
at which they meet the ocean, where their waters 
are beaten into foam by the keels of commerce, 
or reflect the towers and walls of a crowded city. 
In history, as in the traveller's experience, the 
splendid is not always the most interesting.* 

It is my purpose to arrange the views I may 
present under two divisions, corresponding to the 
suggestion in the text. Our Fathers laboured, 
and we have entered into their labors. They 
subdued and prepared the field ; we have inherit- 
ed the results of their toils, as materials for fur- 
ther cultivation and ceaseless improvement. 

I. In estimating the labors of the men, who 
gave the first impulse to the settlement of New- 
England, we must by no means confine our view 
to the affecting story of their personal suflferings. 
We must regard them as occupying an important 
place in the long line of reformers, who have stak- 
ed all that men hold dear, and life itself, in the 
cause of valued principles. It is not mere hard- 
ship or self-sacrificing toil, that stamps a noble 
character on human efforts. The vicious man 
will sometimes suffer more and work harder to 
gratify his passions, than the demands of virtue 
would require him to do in order to subdue them. 

* See Appendix B, 



The votary of avarice checrfiilly endures priva- 
tions more rigorous than those of monastic disci- 
pline, and gives himself up to a base martyrdom 
for gold with an unwavering spirit of constancy 
and self-denial. It is only when we regard men 
as devoted, heart and hand, to the sentiment of 
duty and to the solemn law of conscience, that 
their courage, firmness, and endurance assume a 
character of moral dignity. It is the conviction 
of a righteous cause, which sanctifies the quali- 
ties. We feel that there is a privilege in belong- 
ing to the same species with those who have de- 
fied power, smiled upon danger, and stood up 
against contempt, in strong allegiance to what 
they believed to be the right and the true. These 
have been the working-men in the world's ad- 
vancement. Great principles and important priv- 
ileges have gained a safe establishment among 
mankind chiefly at the expense of the labors and 
lives of reformers ; and the effective improvement 
of the race has been measured by the progress of 
successive reformations. This has been the case, 
for the most part, in civil affairs, in science, and 
in religion. 

These steps in the moral or intellectual progress 
of man have sometimes been the result of gradual 
and quiet changes, unobtrusive, perhaps unob- 
served at the successive stages, but producing at 
last a large amount of improvement in standards 
of thought, or habits of action. A diffusion of 
light, slow but continually expansive, takes place 
in the altered opinions or enlarged conceptions of 
individual minds, by the added contributions of n 



9 

long series of years. Errors are undermined, 
rather than beaten down. Unreasonable usages 
are suffered to die out, instead of being demolish- 
ed. The stream is fed by secret rills and obscure 
rivulets, till its course becomes wide and its cur- 
rent irresistible ; and we ascertain that the world 
has gone forward, only by comparing with each 
other periods of time somewhat distant, or coun- 
tries somewhat remote. 

But, for the most part, the advances of man- 
kind have not been so peaceful and silent. The 
most powerful changes have been the effects of 
strong and rapid revolutions. Improvement 
breaks forth, as it were, in irruptions. The 
elements of the social state are shaken, heaved, 
and thrown into new forms by impulses that came 
apparently all at once, though in fact the materi- 
als for the explosion were gathered slowly and in 
secret. When the crisis arrives, ardent minds 
start up prepared to act upon it, and to be acted 
upon by it. They speak in tones, the echos of 
which ring far and wide, and awaken the slum- 
bering, or summon those who were only waiting 
for the call. Then old institutions are questioned 
boldly by minds that have thrown themselves into 
the encounter, determined not to be turned aside; 
and the unprepared supporters of established 
abuses, alarmed by the storm bursting over their 
heads, find themselves suddenly compelled to ral- 
ly to the defence of what they had been accus- 
tomed to receive lazily, as an unquestioned inher- 
itance. The work of ages seems to be done in a 
few years 5 or rather, a few years seem to pre- 



10 

pare work for ages. The spirit of man leaps from 
under tlie burden of oppression, misrule, and 
worn-out errors, and enters upon a path that, 
opens into regions of broader and clearer light, 
as it reaches forward through the tract of time. — 
The consequences of such striking and powerful 
movements are not soon developed. The impulse 
may be given by a few single blows ; but it will 
require centuries to estimate the extent and ac- 
tion of the vibrations, that will thus be propagat- 
ed through the world's affairs. 

Such a revolution had been in operation about 
a century, when our ancestors came to these 
shores, as the forlorn hope in carrying forward 
the work in a new quarter of the world. They 
stood in their lot at one of the most agitating pe- 
riods of a contest of principle against authority, 
which is even now far from being brought to a 
close. The sound, which had gone forth from 
Germany, was repeated with some variations in 
other places, and English Puritans were the legi- 
timate successors of Luther and Zwingle. That 
movement, which history emphatically and ex- 
clusively denominates the Reformation, as it was 
itself the mighty and concentrated effect of pre- 
ceding events, became, in its turn, perhaps the 
most powerful and expansive in the series of caus- 
es that have given character and direction to the 
progress of the human race.* It was introduced 
into England under circumstances unfavorable to 
the speedy operation of its true principles and 
genuine influence. It was made the ally of the 

* See Appendix C. 



11 

profligate passions and the haughty ambition of a 
monarch, whose highest praise is, that his brute 
energy was an instrument of more good than he 
intended. Henry the eighth would have the re- 
formation proceed no further than as it might 
minister to his own aggrandizement, his revenge, 
or his poHcy.* His arbitrary and tyrannical 
daughter, the Maiden Q,ueen, loved power and 
its glittering pomp too well, not to foster with all 
care whatever might gather veneration around the 
throne and its appendages. Of course she look- 
ed with angry jealousy on the disposition to in- 
troduce simplicity into the spirit or the rites of re- 
ligion, or to shake the fabric of ecclesiastical 
aristocracy. She hovered around the suburbs of 
popery, and was withheld from it, probably, only 
by the persuasion that it was better to exercise 
power herself, than to submit to the exercise of 
it from a foreign potentate. But though so pow- 
erful a party were, to use the expressive words of 
the Leyden pastor, " enamoured of the Romish 
hierarchic as of a stately and potent ladie,"t yet 
the authority of the old church, which had so long 
overshadowed the Christian world, was defied 
and overthrown. That was a large and impor- 
tant step. The spirit of reform had gained an 
entrance 5 and though it was compelled to strug- 
gle against the selfish or narrow views of sover- 
eigns, of courts, and of a hierarchy, and to take a 
circuitous course amidst the wiles of state policy, 
still it could nowise be banished or suppressed. 

* The causes of this are well stated by Neal, Hist, of the Puritans. 
I, 74. J J » 

t John Robinson'0 Just and JVecessary JJpologic, Src. p. 3. 



12 

The cause of English reformation, enthralled 
and shackled as it was, failed not to find advo- 
cates consistently faithful to its interests. Among 
those, who desired that the good work should not 
stop at the beginning, we must place that devot- 
ed class of men, whose spirit and principles were 
deeply imbibed by the Plymouth colonists. — 
Those, whom the fierce bigotry of Mary had driv- 
en into exile, returned with a strong love for that 
simplicity of worship and equality of rights, which 
they had witnessed on the continent m the church- 
es of Geneva, Frankfort, and other places. But 
they found on the throne a Q,ueen, who was not 
long in letting them know that such a wide de- 
parture from the old religion was by no means 
agreeable to her taste, and who was determined 
to uphold, in all its completeness, the cumbrous 
and gorgeous array of the English church. The 
rigorous execution of the Act of Uniformity laid 
the foundation for that definite separation from 
the establishment, which has ever since existed. 
A numerous and continually increasing party was 
thenceforth distinctly known under the name of 
Puritans, who aimed at that purer form of faith 
and worship, which they believed themselves 
bound to seek and maintain in conformity with 
the true principles of the reformation. This 
name, however, was not confined to the separa- 
tists from the Church. It was applied to many 
who found reasons to satisfy their consciences in 
still remaining within its pale. It seems, indeed, 
to have been a name of ignominy affixed to all, 
whether within or without the Church, who were 



13 

the friends of a more thorough reform, than was 
agreeable to such as refused the yoke of Popery 
indeed, but were wilUng to take upon their necks 
another nearly as heavy.* 

Of the distinguished body, thus memorable in 
British history, the men, whose services it is our 
pride and our happiness to commemorate this day, 
were a worthy portion. The story of the Leyden 
church, formed, to use the words of Secretary 
Morton, of " divers godly Christians of our En- 
glish nation in the North of England, not only 
witnessing against human inventions and addi- 
tions in the worship of God, but minding most 
the positive and practical part of divine institu- 
tions," is too familiarly known to you, that I 
should repeat it. The character and direction, 
which this little community took from the influ- 
ence of John Robinson, — a man scarcely to be 
mentioned without a pause for eulogy and respect- 
ful remembrance, — were such as to qualify it well 
for the high vocation to which it was called, as 
the vanguard of religion and freedom in a new 
world. His good sense led him to shun the ex- 
travagance of Brown, and to discard the name 
derived from that inconstant man, at first a fiery 
separatist, and at last an eager conformist 5 and 
his catholic spirit and enlarged views were well 
adapted to correct the errors or temper the ill 
directed fervor, to which even good men are lia- 
ble at a period of religious revolution or of right- 
eous resistance.! 

We are, then, to consider our ancestors as con- 



*Sec Appendix D. fSec Appendix E. 



14 

stituting a part — an important part — of a long 
line of reformers ; and it is with reference to this 
fact that their labors are to be regarded as pecu- 
liarly interesting and valuable. It is also neces- 
sary to take this fact into the account, in order 
to make a fair estimate of their characteristic vir- 
tues and faults. We must remember that they 
were cradled, reared, and grew old in the midst 
of conflict, — that theirs was a lot of continual 
struggle and sacrifice; and we must expect to 
find in them both the good and the evil, which 
naturally spring from such circumstances. The 
providence of God watches for our race in ways 
that are not as our ways, and with thoughts that 
are not as our thoughts, requiring us to purchase 
good at the price of contending with evil, and 
compelling even bad passions and selfish aims to 
minister to happy results. We may think it 
w ould be better for the great interests of man- 
kind, if improvement might always be had regu- 
larly in the quiet progress of common causes and 
effects, in what may be termed the natural order 
of things, with healthful impulses, and in easy de- 
velopements. We may imagine that an advan- 
tage thus gained by an individual or a nation, 
coming, as it were, naturally in its place, would 
be more justly appreciated, and, as a matter of 
course, would be a starting point, from which 
men would peacefully proceed to other advan- 
tages. But in all this theory there is doubtless 
a fairer promise than the reality, if it could be 
had, would fulfil. At any rate, such is not the 
actual state of tlie case. The world always has 



15 

been, and perhaps always will be, a battle ground, 
where from time to time the true and the false, 
the right and the wrong, the warm love of the 
new and the zealous attachment to the old, meas- 
ure strength and struggle for victory. Good is 
to be gained, in a great part at least, irregularly 
and out of the ferment produced by peculiar exi- 
gencies. Not unfrequently it must spring out of 
evil itself, and be wrung from hostile circum- 
stances by a strong pressure. It is no little con- 
solation to the spirit, when it sickens over the 
darker pages of man's history, to see that even 
from the midst of oppression, injustice, and mis- 
rule have come great efforts, which have rapidly 
carried forward the improvement, or vindicated 
the rights of communities. The case of the Fa- 
thers of New-England was one of these. They 
would never have engaged in that perilous enter- 
prise, the result of which was so glorious, — they 
would not have loosed themselves from the strong 
ties of country, friendship, and domestic chari- 
ties, — they would not have crossed the wide 
ocean, and gathered new homes on a shore un- 
traced by the foot of civilized man, — they would 
not have adventured upon all the forms of danger 
and want that must belong to the office of being 
the jSrst to subdue the wilderness of a new conti- 
nent, — if they could have found safety and tolera- 
tion in their father-land. The event has shown 
that God meant the exigency for good ; but it 
was good necessarily wrought out through the 
medium of hardship to be endured, and of wrong 
to be suffered or resisted. 



16 

In these circamstanccs was found the blessing 
of that trying disciphne, by which our Forefathers 
were prepared for the part they were destined to 
accompHsh in the great designs of Providence. 
The hardships of their situation, as reformers, 
trained them to the arduous office of colonizing 
the wilds of America. It was this stern influence 
which nerved their minds for the heroic enterprise, 
and enabled them to bring hither, amidst circum- 
stances of deep depression and discouragement, 
the germ of those forms of freedom and improve- 
ment, to which the world is now looking with 
ever increasing interest, as furnishing signal and 
exciting lessons of instruction. The energy of 
the human character is not only powerfully exhi- 
bited, but mainly created, in the process of over- 
coming difficulties. The progress, which begins 
and is continued in struggle, at length stimulates 
men to a degree of unwavering courage, strong 
endurance, and resolute self-sacrifice, of which 
they could not have believed themselves capable. 
When we see them compelled to contend inch by 
inch for the ground, which should in justice have 
been conceded at once, and pressing onward and 
upward in a righteous cause against a host of 
obstacles, our compassion or indignation may be 
strongly excited ; but we are relieved by reflect- 
ing that this is precisely the way, in which they 
are most effectually braced and strengthened to 
accomplish a great amount of good. Without 
this discipline, the settlement of our country 
might have taken place, at another time, under 
influences far less favorable to the production of 



17 

happy consequences, and the colonists of New- 
England would probably have passed away un- 
noticed in the common mass of worthy men. — 
The hard necessity of their case revealed to them 
their own strength. The power that was in them 
might have slumbered unused, had not the strong 
pressure of their condition taught them what they 
could do or bear, as the rich mine beneath the 
surface may be disclosed by the lightning's flash, 
which rends the earth.* 

But while there was good in all this discipline, 
there was also evil scarcely to be avoided. To 
extract from a tuition so harsh and exasperating 
none but happy influences, is a task requiring 
such circumspection as can hardly be expected of 
man. In all such cases, so much vigilant cau- 
tion, so much strenuous self-command are neces- 
sary, in order, by a sort of moral chemistry, to 
disentangle the pure from the impure in the midst 
of which it is found, that the separation is, per- 
haps, never entirely eflfected. Strong feeling is 
unavoidably brought into action ; and this, though 
it be a necessary agent in great movements, can 
never act long and sharply without bringing into 
jeopardy the consistency and dignity even of the 
best men. The blessings, which spring from ac- 
tion and reaction, are in their nature exposed to 
this peril. A blow is given from one side and a 
rebound takes place from the other ; and amidst 
the fermentation and strife of the crisis, amidst 
the zeal of the onset on one part and of defence 
on the other, it rarely happens that men see the 

*See Appendix F. 



18 

point at which they ought to stop, or, if they see 
it, are willing to stop there. 

Do we ask too much, when we require that 
these considerations may be allowed to mitigate 
the censure passed upon the faults of that noble 
band of confessors, among whom we find the Ply- 
mouth and Massachusetts settlers ? I do not 
refer to the miserable abuse heaped upon their 
character and cause, in the keen excitement of 
controversy, by the bigoted churchmen of their 
day, like the sanbenitos in which the Inquisition 
dressed out its victims. That may well be suf- 
fered to pass into the oblivion, to which the ex- 
travagance of heated partizans should gladly be 
consigned. I allude to those grave accusations, 
which men of moderation and sober judgment 
have sometimes brought against that whole body 
of reformers, who are classed under the general 
name of Puritans. We are told of their unwor- 
thy and absurd prejudices, their unreasonable 
scruples, and their strong passions. We are re- 
minded of stern and uncompromising qualities, 
amounting, it is alleged, almost to a renounce- 
ment of the graces, the courtesy, and the respect, 
which dignify and sweeten life. We are present- 
ed wilh the image of men of dark and severe 
countenances, of harsh demeanor, stiffly devoted 
to whimsical peculiarities, and frowning on the 
innocent liberties of social existence.* If, how- 
ever, there ;were a foundation for such charges in 
their full extent, shall we discard the apology that 
may be found in the oppressive and exasperating 

^Seo Appendix G. 



19 

circumstances that weighed heavily upon these 
men for a long series of years, and forget that 
such faults are not worthy for a moment to be 
laid in the balance against those sterling qualities 
of excellence, those substantial merits, which en- 
abled them to become the benefactors of the 
world by their deeds and sufferings ? Trace the 
history of the treatment they received at the hands 
of church and state from the time of the eighth 
Henry through that of the first Charles, and shall 
we, sitting at ease in our Zion, wonder to find 
the feelings of those, who were spurned as out- 
casts for claiming the common rights of con- 
science, becoming sometimes stern, rigid, or sour 
during such a process ? When, for instance, the 
Leyden church sought a grant from the Virginia 
company, and craved permission, as for a privi- 
lege, to banish themselves across the pathless 
ocean to the forests of these shores, the only boon 
they could obtain, wiih regard to religious free- 
dom, was, that ""the king would connive at and 
not molest them, provided that they carried peace- 
ably," but would allow them no toleration under 
his seal. Shall we think that we have made a 
surprising discovery, if men are found not free 
from asperity, when they are taught to esteem it 
a favor to be permitted to exist in a wilderness, 
and take their portion with the wolf and the sav- 
age during good behavior ? 

But these accusations are by no means well 
founded to the extent, in which they are general- 
ly stated. At the period when our ancestors 
came to this country, the Puritans were a respect- 



20 

able, grave, and dignified class, austere in their 
general character doubtless, but not inclined to 
despise the elegancies or refinements of life. — 
Some of the best scholars in the kingdom were 
in their number. A charge implying that they 
were factious and vulgar disorganizers is without 
truth. There were bad and wrong headed men 
among them, undoubtedly ; and when was there 
a cause requiring boldness and energy in its advo- 
cates, that was not sometimes tarnished by ex- 
travagance or folly ? But in the earlier part of 
their course, — and it is that of which I now speak, 
— before the pressure of circumstances had be- 
trayed the party into bitterness and excess, they 
were as a body distinguished by conscientious 
moderation. They looked indeed with but little 
favor on the trappings, the stateliness, and the 
official pomp of the establishment ; but it was 
because they believed, as they said without affec- 
tation and in the honesty of their hearts, that 
these things were not according to the simplicity 
of the Gospel. For a long time they cherished 
kind and filial feelings towards the church of their 
country, though they thought and^ lamented that 
she had stopped midway on the path of reform. — 
Even Barrow, a warm leader among the Inde- 
pendents, when he was asked upon his trial, 
whether the church of England were a true church 
or not, went no further in his reply than to say, — 
" as it is now formed, it is not ; but there arc 
many excellent Christians who belong to its com- 
munion."* They did not look with so much 



*Bogue & Bennell's History of Dissenters, 1, 133.— The kind and 



21 

veneration on the carved work of the sanctuary^ 
as some of their cotemporaries 5 but they did not 
therefore aim to demolish the temple. Was it 
moroseness, that they reverenced the Sabbath, 
and were shocked with the Book of Sports, — 
that they deemed the Lord's day more profitably 
and appropriately spent in the sobriety of religious 
occupations, than in may-games and morris-dan- 
ces ? If so, some even of the dignitaries of the 
church must share the reproach ; for they were 
equally grieved at these violations of decency. — 
That these persecuted but unbroken champions 
of a righteous cause were, for many years, good 
and dutiful subjects of the king, cannot be denied 
except on the authority of the slanders of such 
men as Bancroft and Laud. When we consider 
how intimately the religious errors and abuses, 
which they opposed, were connected with the 
throne and the civil establishment, it is remarka- 
ble that they so long discriminated with patience 
and caution between the duties of remonstrance 
against the former and of obedience to the latter, 
manifesting a reasonable though not servile loyal- 
ty, while they kept consciences void of offence. — 
Their situation in this respect was not unlike that 
of some of the early Christians, whom the empe- 
ror Julian endeavored to entrap into idolatry by 
placing near his own statues the images of Jupi- 
ter and other gods, so that while, in conformity to 
the custom of the Romans, they bowed to the 
former as a token of submission and honor, they 

respectful disposition manifested in the well known letter " aboard the 
Arbella," by the leaders'of the Massachusetts settlement, shciuld bo re- 
membered in tiiis connexion. 



^9 

might seem to render the homage of worship to 
the latter.* WiUiams, bishop of Lincoln, once 
ventured to say, "that the Puritans were the 
king's best subjects and he was sure would carry 
all at last, and that the king had assured him that 
he would treat them more mildly for the future." 
It is a curious fact, that for saying this. Laud 
caused an accusation to be brought against Wil- 
liams in the Star-Chamber, for revealing the 
king''s secrets.^ 

We are sometimes told that the class, to whom 
our Fathers belonged, were bigots in unimpor- 
tant matters, and wasted a disproportionate 
strensth of zeal on little thin<]js. But it should 
be remembered that the points, about which man- 
kind interest themselves, are little or great ac- 
cording to the consequences to which they lead 
or the principles they involve. Estimated by this 
standard, the ardor with which these reformers 
entered even into questions about the white sur- 
plice, or the sign of the cross, will scarcely ap- 
pear misplaced or exaggerated. And even if they 
did sometimes think too much of trifles, and if 
their conduct on some occasions seems to us like 
a strong man lifting his arm to strike a feather, 
still we should remember that by the constitution 
of our nature an overstrained enthusiasm is a sort 
of necessary stimulus to those who have a great 
cause in hand, and that without the disposition 



*Cave's Primitive Christianity^ p. 72. 

■j-Jones'a Lj/e of Bp. Hall, p. 150.— See Ihe touching and indignant 
remonstrance of the ministers of Devon and Cornwall, ns given by Neai, 
Hist, of the Puritans, H, 92 —The testimony of the Dutch to the ex- 
emplary and peaceable character of the Leyden congregation is too well 
known to be adduced here. 



23 

to magnify the importance of contested points, 
few undertakings of much toil or danger would 
be attempted or successfully accomplished. 

Are we reminded that our Fathers, the eager 
vindicators of religious liberty for themselves, 
were in their turn guilty of persecution ? We 
can but say, that this fact adds another to the 
many melancholy lessons of human inconsistency. 
But where and when have the champions of the 
right and the just been always right and just 
themselves ? The reformation from Popery was 
soon disgraced by some of the very errors, from 
which it undertook to set men free. But the 
principles, which it vindicated and established 
were none the less valuable on that account. So 
the cause of religious liberty, for which our Fa- 
thers entered the breach in contest with the pow- 
er of a proud hierarchy, was not less to be prized, 
nor the debt of gratitude we owe them for wa- 
ging battle for it the less, because they were not 
always true to it in their own example. If their 
conduct in this respect be viewed comparatively, 
as it ought partly to be viewed, it may be fairly 
said that with more excuse for intolerance, they 
were less intolerant than their oppressors. It 
should not be forgotten that legal toleration for 
dissenters was a thing unknown in England until 
16S9, and then was but a grudged and imperfect 
concession.* With respect to this point, it should 
always be observed that the Plymouth colony 
was in a considerable degree honorably distin- 

*.See Appendix H. 



guishcd from that of Massachusetts, by a more 
tolerant and forbearing spirit. f 

I have adverted to the labors, which the colo- 
nists of New-England shared in common with 
the great company of reformers. But we must 
not pass unnoticed, on this occasion, those per- 
sonal labors and personal sufferings, which laid 
the foundation of a flourishing community on 
these shores. The whole transaction seems to 
me to wear an aspect of peculiar moral greatness. 
You know it all. You know the anxious appre- 
hensions, which gathered over the little congre- 
gation in Holland, their vexatious negociations, 
the fraud that in different forms spread its snares 
around their removal, their devout confidence in 
God and in " the omen of a good cause," their 
prayers, and their tears. You have often thought 
of that solitary vessel, which, having been aban- 
doned by her companion, as if to leave her alone 
with the glory of the heroic enterprize, pursued 
her cheerless course over the wide waste of wa- 
ters. I venture to say, you have felt that with 
that ship are connected associations, in some re- 
spects not less touching and great than those, 
which history has attached to the little and crazy 
fleet of that wonderful man who, somewhat less 
than a century and a half before, reposing with 
dauntless trust on the conclusions of his own 
mind, revealed a new and vast continent to the 
gaze of the old world. Your thoughts have fol- 
lowed her course with a solemn interest, arising 
from the persuasion that a great experiment for 



fHutchinson's /fis/. of Masaachuselts^ II, 421. 



25 

humanity was hanging on her fate. Your hearts 
have sunk to see her shaken with the fierce winds, 
and tossing amidst the fury and blackness of the 
tempest ; and you have ahnost heard the cries for 
deliverance poured forth by those devoted men, 
with no rehance but their faith, yet strong in that 
as in an overcoming power. You have marked 
how the providence of God, having chosen this 
vessel to be the messenger of high purposes, held 
its watch over her amidst danger and distress ; 
and if the Roman chieftain could say in his pride 
to his dismayed pilot — " wherefore do you fear 
while you carry C^sar, " — with how much better 
reason might it have been said to him who sat at 
the helm of the Mayjflower — fear not, for you 
carry the hope of freedom and of piety ! At 
length you have found them on this barren coast, 
thanking God on their knees for deliverance from 
peril and death. You have accompanied them, 
as if side by side, while they explored the coun- 
try, and finally marked this spot for their rest. — 
You have seen the desolation of disease and death 
spreading among the little band, while under the 
stern severity of winter they sat at their board 
with want and famine. You have followed them 
in their intercourse with the savages, — an inter- 
course of fearful apprehension, relieved occasion- 
ally by the kindness of Massasoit, Hobamak, and 
him who, when he died, made the affecting re- 
quest that they would pray for him " that he 
might go to the Englishman's God in heaven." — 
The story of all that was projected, done, or en- 
dured from the first motion of the proposal for 
4 



26 

emigration to the time, when the remnant of the 
sufferers found themselves here at last in comfort- 
able homes, is as familiar to you all " as house- 
hold words." Here at least the genius of the 
place will not permit the toil and sufferings of 
the pilgrims to be forgotten. Here at least you 
will feel, that "as an eagle stirreth up her nest, 
fluttereth over her young, spreadeth abroad her 
wings, taketh them, beareth them on her wings 5 
so the Lord alone did lead them, and there was 
no strange god with them." How much mean- 
ing may we now attach to that affecting saluta- 
tion, which fell upon the ears of the surprised 
pilgrims with startling pleasure, — "Welcome 
Englishmen !" Yes, welcome to the wants and 
the labors of a wilderness, — welcome to privation, 
distress, and wasting toil, — but welcome too to 
the high honor of kindling the beacon-light of the 
Gospel in a region of darkness, and welcome to 
the glorious reward of martyrs for truth and ser- 
vants to God !* 

II. It is time that I should pass to a brief 
consideration of the other portion of my subject, 
and remind you that we have entered into the la- 
bors of the Fathers, that their sufferings and their 
courage were the price of an inheritance to us, 
concerning which our prayer should be, that we 
may know how to prize it as we ought. It was 
the lot of the pilgrims, — a lot to which the bene- 
factors of mankind have been often called, — 

To sow in peril, and let others reap 
The jocund harvest. 

' Se« Appendix I. ' ;i 



27 

Their own^ phrase, was that "they [should be but 
as stepping-stones to others, who might come 
after them."* 

The planting of New-England under such cir- 
cumstances and by such men gave birth to conse- 
quences of far more important and extensive ope- 
ration, than could have been anticipated. It is 
one of the most impressive of those instances, in 
which God teaches us that events such as man 
despises sometimes contain the moving springs of 
the greatest interests. How utterly hidden from 
the eyes of the hierarchy and the government of 
England was the nature of that work, of which 
they were the unconscious instruments ! Em- 
phatically might it be said to them, as the favor- 
ite son of Jacob said to his brethren, " that which 
ye devised for evil, God devised for good, to bring 
about, as it now appears, the preservation of a 
numerous people."! While they were framing 
and urging the severest measures against trifling 
forms of dissent, while they were inflicting fines, 
imprisonment, or death, as the penalty of non- 
conformity, while they were authorizing inquisi- 
torial persecutions under the name of judicial 
proceedings,— all unknown to themselves they 
were in fact preparing the foundations of a new 
empire ; they were casting abroad seeds which 
on another continent were to yield fruits for the 
healing of the nations ; they were driving from 
themselves men, who carried with them principles 
and feelings, the operation of which has added a 

^Belknnp'a Amer Biography, II. 168.-See Appendix K. 
fGen.L, 20, Geddea'a Translation. 



28 

volume of new meaning to man's history. So 
that if here a refuge has been opened for the spirit 
of enhghtcned freedom, if here an opportunity is 
presented of trying fairly the experiment whether 
man is worthy of the high privilege of self-govern- 
ment, and can keep it, the whole may be regarded 
as the result of the insupportable action of that 
bad spirit, which banished from England some of 
her best minds and purest hearts.* I suppose 
few events could have been deemed more insigni- 
ficant by James and his court, than the departure 
of the puritan emigrants for the wilds of America. 
At that time their interest was absorbed and their 
minds agitated by the negotiation with Spain for 
Prince Charles's match, and the question of neu- 
trality in the contest between the house of Aus- 
tria and the states of Bohemia. Yet how do sub- 
jects like these dwindle and vanish in the true es- 
timate of great influences, when contrasted with 
the voyage of that small vessel, which, on the 6th 
of September, 1620, sailed from the harbor of 
Plymouth in the Old World, and finally cast her 
anchor in that of Plymouth in the New World ! 
We have entered into the labors of the Fathers 
in the blessings of our civil institutions ; for these 
may justly be regarded as the ultimate result of 
the impulses imparted by them. The English 
puritans, though faithful and loyal subjects till 
they were forced by circumstances into resist- 
ance, had adopted principles which were destined, 
as they were progressively developed, to operate 
as a strong check on arbitrary power. They con- 

*See Appendix L. 



29 

tended strenuously for some of the elementary 
rights of conscience ; and these are so intimately 
connected with civil rights, that the questions re- 
lating to the exercise of power with regard to both 
could not long be separated. Religious enthusi- 
asm is very likely to contain within itself the germ 
of the general principles of freedom, and to open 
the way for political speculations tending towards 
the doctrine, so harsh to royal ears, that power is 
a trust to be bestowed or revoked at the pleasure 
of those for whose good alone it should be exer- 
cised. England herself at this hour owes much 
to the men who, even by the confession of some 
writers whose partialities were all the other way, 
had the honor of infusing into her Constitution its 
most vigorous portions of liberty 5 for have not 
recent events in that kingdom borne testimony to 
the productive energy of the same spirit that for 
two centuries and a half has been at work there, 
sometimes flashing out in violence, sometimes 
struggling onwards slowly, and sometimes en- 
thralled or fiercely driven back, but always alive, 
always watchful, always ready for action ? 

At the period when New-England was colon- 
ized, the notions of civil freedom in the mother 
country, even among its best friends, were not a 
little confused and immature. But there were 
some principles, and more feelings, on this sub- 
ject sufficiently distinct and vital to render it pro- 
bable, that with the aid of opportunity they would 
ripen into clearness, consistency, and strength. — 
Such opportunity was found on these shores. — 
When the pilgrims, by the treachery of their cap- 



50 

tain, were placed beyond the limits of the Virginia 
Company, and their patent of course was useless, 
before they landed they entered into a compact 
which, as their Memorialist says, " was the first 
foundation of the government of New Plymouth," 
and which, as you know, is considered as con- 
taining the essential principle of popular and re- 
publican institutions.* This fact is of impor- 
tance, as showing that when left to themselves 
they spontaneously adopted ideas, the whole val- 
ue and distinct character of which they probably 
did not fully understand. It indicates that at the 
outset a principle was in existence, which in its 
gradual and sure expansion would produce the 
most extensive effects. And never was it lost, 
though the occasions for its full operation were 
comparatively long in coming. We trace its 
manifestations from time to time through the 
whole course of our history, in the strong jealousy 
of encroachment, in the clear apprehension and 
bold support of rights, even at a period when the 
colonists were sincerely loyal, and when the sus- 
picion of a wish to throw off their allegiance to 
the crown was indignantly repelled. At length 
it was brought into intense and efficient action, 
as an element of popular character and feeling, 
in the struggle which placed the colonies in the 
attitude of a separate and sovereign people among 
the nations of the earth. At that fearful crisis 
the spirit of the pilgrims was matured in the reso- 
lute wisdom, the moral courage of their descend- 



*Baylies'3 Hist. Memoir of the Colony of JSTeto Plymouth, I, 29, and 
Hutchinson's Hist, of Mass. II, 409. 



31 

ants ; and the voice which then echoed over our 
hills and along our shores, and mustered the for- 
ces of a common cause, was but the louder procla- 
mation of what had been spoken many years be- 
fore in a manner less audible and distinct. In 
this connexion, I cannot but remark a striking- 
coincidence appropriate to the present occasion. 
It was in the year 1769, a time when the dark 
storm was gathering, and men suspected that the 
hour of open and final resistance was at hand, 
that the Old Colony Club of Plymouth proposed 
and observed the first Celebration of the Land- 
ing,* — as if the memory of the Fathers was awak- 
ened with new interest to hallow the coming strug- 
gle, that was to finish a work, which they may 
well be said to have begun in the solitary places 
of their infant settlements. And when to the 
arduous conflict succeeded the yet more arduous 
task of building the frame- work of political and 
social institutions, when the hard trial of achieving 
the prize was followed by the still harder one of 
deciding how it should be preserved and used, 
when a new and great experiment was to be made 
in the philosophy of government, when the me- 
chanism that might constitute a durable common- 
wealth was to be erected among a people embar- 
rassed by none of the rubbish of old institutions, 
and fettered by no remnants of Gothic establish- 
ments, and when under unexampled circumstan- 



*Dr. Thacher's Hist, of Plymouth, p. 180. The same writer in- 
forms us (p. 202) that when the Rock was elevated from its bed in 1774, 
it fell asunder without violence. No flaw had been previously observed 
in it ; and some of the patriots found in it an omen of the division oftha 
British empire. 



32 

ces of interest and responsibleness a choice was 
to be made, where — to use the words of one of 
the greatest men of that day* — " a wrong election 
might be considered as the general misfortune of 
mankind," — then was at length reared the struc- 
ture of a confederate republic, of which we may 
justly say, that it stands as a monument to the 
principles and labors of our pilgrim ancestors. 

A^ain : we have a blessin<? from the labors of 
the Fathers in the character, which religious in- 
stitutions have hitherto taken among us. Amidst 
the frailties of superstition and of narrow preju- 
dice, some of which the colonists of New-England 
shared in common with their age, and some of 
which grew out of their peculiar circumstances, it 
is refreshing to find that they recognized distinct- 
ly and ftdly certain leading principles, which lie 
at the foundation of the most expansive forms of 
religious freedom. They had been driven in self- 
defence to institute inquiries, from which resulted 
views of far reaching import ; and if there were 
times when these views were mingled with bitter- 
ness or darkened by unhappy errors of judgment, 
they were neither the first nor the last body of 
men who have not been always as good as their 
principles. The great elements of the charac- 
ter, which religion has taken in our community, 
were brought to the Rock of Plymouth and to 
the shores of Massachusetts Bay. Here were 
established the important principles, now so 
familiar to us, that Christians are to look to the 
Scriptures for the binding rule of faith and prac- 

•Alexander Hamilton in the Federalist. 



33 

tice, to judge for themselves of their meaning, and 
to believe and worship accordingly, — that every 
church is an entirely independent body, — and that 
all churches are in every respect equal. The 
covenants of some of the earliest churches were 
remarkable for the Christian simplicity and the 
elevated spirit, in which they were framed. They 
were so free from a sectarian character, that they 
could not have excluded from religious commun- 
ion the sincere Christian of any denomination, — 
as if designed to exemplify the fine remark of 
John Robinson, who, in his very interesting vin- 
dication of his fellow-believers, says that their 
faith consisted not " in the condemning of others, 
and wipeing their names out of the bead-roul of 
churches."* 

No men ever felt more deeply than our Fathers 
the necessity of religion to the good of the com- 
munity, as well as to the improvement and salva- 
tion of the individual. They believed this power 
to be one of those elements of social union, which 
are vitally essential. They did not suppose that 
all which can or ought to be said of it is finished, 
when it is affirmed to be a concern between the 
individual and his God. In their estimate it was 
this indeed ; but then it was likewise a concern 
between the members of society, a matter in 
which they are mutually interested ; and they 
would as soon have thought of a world without a 
sun, as of a community without religion, or with- 
out a provision for its support. Whether in all 
this they judged wisely or not, let the wild exper- 

*Juat and J\recessary Apologie^ ch. xii. 

5 



54 

iments, which have sometimes been made in de" 
fiance of such principles, bear testimony. But 
while they felt the importance of giving religion a 
strong and safe lodgement among the elements of 
security and wellbeing in the social state, they 
set themselves in the spirit of self-sacrifice against 
the impositions of man in this sacred interest, 
against the assumed right, questioned by few but 
themselves in their day, to bind conscience or to 
fetter the soul. Though the merit of uniform 
consistency was w^anting to render their praise 
complete, still we must remember that if there 
has hitherto been in our community a happy union 
of profound respect for religion with the entire 
religious freedom of each individual, — if public 
opinion has regarded it in all its forms as the safe- 
guard of society, while every man has been left 
in perfect liberty to choose among its forms ac- 
cording to his own convictions, — we are bound in 
justice to trace the blessing to its origin in the 
labors and character of the men who laid the 
foundations of New-England. 

We are accustomed to believe that nothing in 
our condition demands a more hearty offering of 
gratitude, than that the soul is free, and that the 
relation between man and his Maker is untouched 
by the arm of civil authority. We deem it a 
precious privilege that we are not compelled to 
judge in spiritual matters by prescribed and fixed 
formularies, — that, so far as outward force is con- 
cerned, religious truth is not driven into by-paths 
and circuitous routes, nor compelled to find its 
:way in silence and secrecy, but may stand forth, 



35 

and announce its claims, and win what minds or 
hearts it can, — that Christianity, the messenger 
of God's mercy to the world, is not chained, and 
manacled, and made to work out a task prescrib- 
ed for her by arbitrary power, but that for aught 
government can do she retains her native freedom, 
and scatters her blessings from an open hand 
wherever there is a willing mind, or a soul that 
has sought happiness in vain from other sources. 
There may be indirect influences among us, which 
in some cases embarrass true liberty of conscience 
if not as cruelly, yet as surely, as the prospect of 
the prison or the fagot. But these are not evils 
constituted and sanctioned by our institutions ; 
and the man among us who bears an enslaved 
mind, does so by his own choice. The whole 
apparatus of established creeds and cumbrous 
ceremonies, by which the civil power seeks to bind 
religion fast in its service, is unknown to us ; and 
we are accustomed to congratulate ourselves that 
we are allowed to try the experiment of what re- 
ligion can do for man where difference of opinion 
is not regarded as a crime, except in the impotent 
denunciations of the bigot. If in all this there be 
a great good, though the good may be perverted 
by a melancholy abuse into licentiousness, let the 
praise be given to those who breasted the shock 
of that stern contest with kings and prelates, out 
of which sprung the redemption of the faith of 
Jesus from bondage. If in all this there be a 
blessing, to which we point with exulting thank- 
fulness, however unworthily we may use it, let 
the honor be paid to those who, in a season of fear- 



96 

ful struggle, stood up in the strength of heaven's 
cause for the rights of conscience against time-hal- 
lowed usurpations and consecrated abuses, and 
who at length, carrying forth victory in their re- 
treat, like the church personified in the sublime 
visions of the Apocalypse, " fled into the wild- 
erness where they had a place prepared of God." 
There is an aspect, in which the freedom of 
mind thus won by our progenitors, and transmit- 
ted to us, may long render an important service 
to the cause of religious improvement. I refer 
to the facility, with which religion may thus 
change its outward forms to meet the variations 
arising from the progress of society. The differ- 
ence between the religious sentiment, and the 
modes in which it is manifested or sustained ex- 
ternally, must have occurred to every attentive 
observer of man. The sentiment itself is the only 
thing, which can be, or ought to be, permanent. 
The forms, which it takes or abandons, at one 
period or another, are only helps, in their nature 
temporary. They are of great importance, doubt- 
less, so long as they are fitted to answer their true 
purpose as the defence and support of solemn re- 
alities. But they are necessarily changeable, 
and must be so while man is a progressive being. 
It is the part of a wisely constituted society to 
provide that these changes may take place easily, 
and without that violence which is apt to react 
injuriously upon the religious sentiment itself — 
Truth is grossly wronged, when it is bound fast 
to human forms in such a manner, as to fix the 
impression that it must live or die with them. If 



37 

it be not free to break away from them and take 
new ones, the essential, hfe-giving spirit will be 
brought into subjection to what is necessarily 
perishable, — the everlasting power will be en- 
thralled by external circumstance. If then our 
puritan ancestors, by maintaining the entire free- 
dom of the Christian believer as to all the forms 
and helps instituted by man, while at the same 
time they were firmly persuaded that the religious 
sentiment belongs to the very life-blood of socie- 
ty, and that without it there is rottenness at the 
heart of all institutions, shall be found to have 
given a strong impulse to the development of the 
interior power, the spiritual life of Christianity, 
they will have done more perhaps than any other 
men to send it forth on the free and glorified 
course, which as a principle of moral sanctifica- 
tion, we believe, it is destined to run. 

It would be easy to enlarge the details of that 
inheritance, into which we have entered from the 
labors of the Fathers. The impulse, which the 
cause of learning and of good education so early 
received in this part of our land, and which has 
been perpetuated ever since with increased vigor, 
is a rich part of the inheritance. There are 
names — I need not enumerate them, for they are 
familiar to us all — in the first half century of 
New-England's settlement, sufficient to show 
that it was not mere illiterate rudeness which took 
refuge in the wilderness, — men, both among the 
clergy and the laity, of large scholarship, of hard 
study, of minds ripened under the tuition of books 
as well as under the stern discipline of circum- 



38 

stances. It was, indeed, the natural result of the 
principles which brought them hither, tliat the 
means and the love of knowledge should be among 
the constituent elements of the new community. 
The good seeds were sown as plentifully as cir- 
cumstances permitted 5 and without making any 
idle boast of the intelligence of our people, we 
may say that a healthy and profitable growth has 
sprung from them. It is a well known fact, that 
" during the greater part of the seventeenth cen- 
tury, the literature of the American colonies was 
in a great measure confined to New-England."* 
I am far from wishing to boast of comparative 
superiority at presentoverotherpartsof our union 
in this respect; for we rejoice to believe that the 
several portions of our confederacy are pressing 
forward earnestly on the path of mental improve- 
ment. But we must bear record, that if the 
means of diff'using knowledge, if free schools and 
literary seminaries grew up first on the soil of 
New-England, we owe, for the happy fruits that 
are springing from them in our country, a tribute 
of gratitude to the worthies of old who planted 
and watered the germ at a time, when most men 
would have thought they were doing much, amply 
enough, if they could provide for the pressing 
wants of the passing day, and find safety for their 
persons and settlements. 

From these and kindred considerations it is 
manifest, that the men of whom I have spoken 
were called, in the providence of God, to perform 
a most important part in the world's affairs, and 



*Milier'8 Rctiofj^ccl of the dghlccnth Century., II, 332. 



m 

performed it well. The great idea, so to say, of 
which it was their office to sketch at least the 
outline on the map of man's history, is instinct 
with a vitality, the full power of which the world 
is yet to learn. It is taking its course among the 
nations, as a quickening and elastic element in 
the combinations of thought and action that are 
in progress, or are yet to be formed. It is the 
interior spirit which stirs in those omens of new 
developments, that are believed to be now 
abroad in the world. The sounds are heard from 
deep and distant places, which may in time be 
formed into a distinct and articulate utterance, 
announcing that man has learned to read better 
than before the design of God in the purposes of 
the social state. If the history of a large part of 
mankind for a century to come shall, as we are 
prone to believe, be fraught with such interest, 
dear to the friends of improvement, as no previ- 
ous century has exhibited, it is not perhaps too 
much to say, that the pilgrim spirit will then be 
understood to have borne within its latent energy 
a measureless power of good for our race, and 
that the voice which cried in the American wild- 
erness will have returned to the old world, whence 
it came, to awaken corresponding voices there. — 
But if such a view must be deemed too much like 
the dreams of prospective romance, still we may 
not forget that the name and the doings of the 
Plymouth and Massachusetts pilgrims are bound 
up in inseparable association with the fact, that 
here on this Western continent a scene has been 
opened for a grand experiment on the capacity 



40 

of man for self-direction and independent action, 
an experiment of new forms of society and of prin- 
ciples never before recognised as the basis of a 
community, an experiment, we may add, on which 
the eyes of some of the wisest and best on the 
other continent are earnestly intent, with prophet- 
ic anticipations of a refuge for the high interests 
of humanity, when worn-out systems with their 
abuses shall have passed away.* God save us 
from the shame and the guilt of betraying such 
hopes to a bitter and inglorious disappointment ! 

Such then were some of the labors of those, 
whom on this anniversary we delight to commem- 
orate ; and such is the inheritance which has fal- 
len to our lot. We love to come hither, and in 
the spirit of filial reverence bring our tribute of 
grateful remembrance to the spot, which is forev- 
er hallowed by the names of Carver, Bradford, 
Brewster, Winslow, and Standish, and where the 
dust of our ancestors is mingled with the earth on 
which we tread. The Fathers, where are they ? 
They have joined the mighty congregation of the 
dead : their witness is in heaven : their record is 
on high. In every thought of the past we hear 

The due beat 
Of Time's slow-sweeping pendulum, that marks 
The momentary march of death on man. 

It is the presence of mind, which imparts a solemn 
and touching interest to the ravages of time 
among the generations of men. Without this, 
even the most magnificent ruins of inanimate na- 



*See Appendix M. 



41 

lure have comparatively but little to affect us. — 
There are convulsions, which shiver in pieces the 
rock and rend fragments from the mountain ; the 
river may be turned aside from its deep bed ; the 
restless ocean wears away the land on which it 
beats, and again the shore gains upon the domin- 
ion of the mighty waters ; the forest goes down 
to the dust in the slow progress of decay, and a 
new growth comes in its place to fall likewise in 
its own time. On changes like these we look 
with wonder, as objects of study or of curiosity. 
But where living, thinking, acting man has been, 
there the retrospect presents an interest of anoth- 
er sort, — an interest that kindles our hearts as if 
by the touch of an invisible power, and consti- 
tutes a hallowed fellowship between our minds 
and minds that have long since gone upward to 
higher scenes of action and improvement. Why 
is it that the traveller visits, with an emotion al- 
together different from the feeling excited by the 
common wrecks of nature, those ancient cities 
that have been partly recovered by the labors of 
modern times from the mass of earth and lava, 
under which they had been buried for ages ? It 
is because they speak to him of man — of man in 
other times — of his intellect, his works, and in- 
ventions, of his social arrangements, his habits, 
his sufferings, and his joys. The soul of those, 
who trod the streets and reposed in the dwellings, 
lingers around the imagination of the spectator 5 
and the most common utensil, the most ordinary 
edifice, becomes a symbol to signify that spirit 
abode and wrought there. Such is the natural 
6 



42 

sentiment of the human heart all over the world. 
We do right then, though here we have no ancient 
ruins and but few memorials of the past, to vene- 
rate this place as the cradle of our community, 
"gentis cunabula nostrse 5" we do right to come 
hither when winter is sending its blasts along 
these shores, or has laid its snow-wreaths on these 
hills, that we may gather salutary excitement 
from our kindred with the departed wise and good. 

And now. Christian friends, it becomes us to 
ask whether we have honored the memory of the 
Pilgrim Fathers in the only manner worthy of 
them, or profitable for us, by imitating all that 
was good in their example, by imbibing all that 
was pure and holy in their spirit. I am not about 
to repeat the complaint, which has been reiterated 
from some of the remotest ages on record, that 
"the former days were better than these." — - 
The complaint in general is idle and unfounded. 
What is called degeneracy is often only an alter- 
ation, and not necessarily an alteration for the 
worse. The lesson to be collected from history, 
frequently, is that the mass of men rather change 
their virtues and vices, than become actually bet- 
ter or worse. Our faults and virtues belong to 
our period of society, as the faults and virtues of 
our Fathers did to theirs ; and a comparative es- 
timate involves the checks and balances of so ma- 
ny different considerations, that it is not so easily 
despatched as may seem to some indiscriminate 
praisers of the past time. But, without discussing 
the relative merits of present and former days. 



43 

we must remember that our praises of the pilgrim 
band are nothing worth, if they do not express 
and cherish on our part the love of high and holy 
principles. The martyrs to truth and freedom 
have ever deemed their own dearest honor to be 
the honor paid to their beloved cause. They have 
sought no better reward in this world, than that 
their good work should be taken up and carried 
on by willing hands, pure hearts, and wise minds. 
They have desired that their eulogy should bo 
written in the completeness of results, to which 
the brevity of human effort allowed them only to 
point the way and direct the tendencies. They 
have not asked of their successors to walk in their 
steps, any further than their path shall be found 
to coincide with the great line of duty and im- 
provement. They wrought out the idea that 
dawned and brightened in their souls, and thus 
brought their part nobly and well to the treasury 
of man's highest good. It remains only that 
those, who come after them, work out some idea 
of kindred excellence, not necessarily in the old 
form, but as it glows in their own spirits, and 
thus do their part for the common race as faith- 
fully and fearlessly. 

Such is the bond of moral connexion, which 
links the men of the present to the great and good 
of the past, to those who have turned back the 
dark waters, that threatened to break over and 
bury the landmarks of man's best possessions, his 
rights of conscience, his mental and moral free- 
dom. And such, I believe, is the relation we arc 
called to sustain toward the ancestors of New- 



44. 

England, not the relation of servile imitators, but 
that of fellow-workers in a good and righteous 
cause. We fulfil well the duty we owe to their 
memory, not when we cleave blindly to their 
forms of faith or modes of conduct, — for these 
may have been right or wrong, — but when we 
welcome and cherish those manly principles, that 
sustaining, sanctifying spirit, which upheld them 
in their work in the midst of darkness, sorrow, 
and sickness of heart. That work was indeed no 
delusion of a heated imagination ; but even had 
it been so, the spirit in which it was accomplished 
would have been left to enrich the moral history 
of our race. They stood in awe of the human 
soul, of her dignity and freedom ; and however 
rudely they might sometimes assert her cause, 
yet there was the stirring of God's power within 
them, which told them that they were right and 
must press on and die in a labor, which others 
would finish. We honor the Fathers then, I re- 
peat, not by believing all that they believed, nor 
by doing what they did, but by seizing on the 
great principles which gave to their doings all 
the real value they have, all the just praise they 
deserve, and by following out these in their true 
consequences honestly, wisely, faithfully. We 
honor them, when the representation of them 
which we exhibit is that of children, in whose 
veins flows the blood of their sires, not that of 
dead pictures, though the resemblance should be 
true in every line and feature.* This is the hom- 
age we would render to the piety, the long tried 



'*See Appendix N. 



45 

endurance, the moral courage of our Fathers, — 
the only homage, as we believe, fit for them to 
accept or for us to give. The pilgrim spirit, we 
trust in God, has not deserted our land 5 we trust 
it has gone forth far and wide among us, to be 
our light and hope in every day of darkness or of 
fear. 

Till the waves of the bay, where the May -Flower lay, 
Shall foam and freeze no more. 

Let the cause of education among us be wisely 
cherished in the belief that the outlay we make 
on mind is the noblest use of our treasure ; let 
liberty rest on the foundation of those great prin- 
ciples of the human constitution, which may not 
be neglected with impunity 5 let the sanctifying 
influences of the Gospel be interwoven with the 
whole structure of society, and the church of 
Christ be permitted to go forth on an unshackled 
course and be glorified; — then the men of other 
lands shall know that beyond the waves lies the 
home of the free and the good, the dwelling of 
man as God designed him to be, and of the Cfiris- 
tian as Jesus would have him ; and then it shall 
be seen that from the precious seed the pilgrims 
bore, when they went forth in sorrow, have come 
the sheaves of a glorious harvest ! 



appe:^i>ix. 



A. 

A striking illustration of the youthfulness of our country may 
be found in the fact, that within a very few years it has required 
only the memory of two men to reach back to the first Plymouth 
■colonists. The Hon. Ephraim Spooner,who died in March 1818, 
was acquainted with the venerable Elder Faunce, who died in 
1745 in the 99th year of his age , and Elder Faunce was well 
acquainted with some of the the first settlers. 

B. 

Ernesti, in the fine dedication prefixed to his edition of Cic- 
ero, has well and truly said — " Nescio enim, naturane nobis hoc 
datum sit, an errore quodam ipsa antiquitate vehementer move- 
araur, magisque rebus antiquis, quamvis tenuibus et parvis, 
quam recentibus vel niaximis afficiamur." 

C. 

The causes and consequences of Luther's reformation have 
furnished a most fertile topic for ingenious and profound specu- 
lation. The subject has perhaps never been investigated in a 
more truly philosophical spirit, than in the work of Villers. — 
That great revolution was doubtless aided in its progress by 
many concurrent labors, some of which were apparently trivial, 
but really important. Warton has observed, that " the lively 
colloquies of Erasmus, which exposed the superstitious prac- 
tices of the papists with much humour and in pure Latinity, 
made more protestants than the ten tomes of John Calvin." — 
Hist, of English Poetry, III. 267. The materials for the 
final manifestation, which was brought out under the agency of 
the great reformer, had been long in accumulation, when the 
matchless energy of that most courageous man put them in ac- 
tion. The immediate causes of remarkable changes are gen- 
erally not those, which deserve the most attention. It is said 
that a work was once projected, to be entitled Historia Refor- 
mationis ante Reformationem. A similar history might be de- 
sired with regard to almost all important changes. But the hu- 
mor of tracing a long series of connexions and dependences 
among events is too pleasant an exercise of ingenuity not to be 
abused. I do not remember a more striking instance of the 
absurd length to which speculations of this kind may be carried 



48 

than in the concatenation of causes and effects, by which John 
Newton of Ohiey seriously attempts to show, tliat if Josepli had 
not dreamed, " mankind had been still in their sins witliout 
hope, and the counsels of God's eternal love in favour of sin- 
ners defeated."! See his Authentic Narrative, &,c. Letter VI. 

D. 

The term Puritan, for some time after its origin,was not the 
exclusive designation of those who separated from the Church, 
but was applied to all such as were remarkable for strictness or 
severe piety, or such as entertained scruples about complying 
with some ecclesiastical requisitions. The remarks of Fuller 
on this subject deserve to be quoted. " The English Bishops," 
says he, " conceiving themselves impowered by their Canons, 
began to show their authority in urging the Clergy of their 
Diocess to subscribe to the liturgie, ceremonies, and discipline 
of the Church, and such as refused the same were branded with 
the odious name of Puritans. A name which in this nation 
first began in this year (1564), and the grief had not been 
great, if it had ended in the same. The philosopher banisheth 
the term, (which h poly sec mon) that is subject to several senses, 
out of the Predicaments, as affording too much covert for cavill 
by the latitude thereof On the same account could I wish 
that the word Puritan were banished common discourse, be- 
cause so various in the acceptions thereof We need not speak 
of the ancient Catliari or primitive Puritans, sufficiently known 
by their hereticall opinions. Puritan here was taken for the 
opposers of the Ilierarchie and Church-service, as resenting of 
superstition. But propliane mouths quickly improved this Nick- 
name, therewith on every occasion to abuse pious people, some 
of them so far from opposing the liturgie, that they endeavoured 
(according to the instructions thereof in the preparative to the 
Confession) to accompany the Minister with a pure heart, and 
laboured (as it is in the Absolution) for a Iife;;M/-e and holy." — 
The Church History of Britain, b. IX, p. 76. Some of the 
best prelates in the Church, such as Hall, bishop of Norivich, 
were reproached with being puritanically inclined, because 
they would not fall in with the fashionable laxity of principle, 
while they were willing to abate the rigor of ceremonies and un- 
important matters for the sake of tender consciences. Under 
these circumstances the name became an honor, instead of a 
disgrace ; and there w?s reason for the prayer expressed by an 
admirer of these good men — "sit anima mea cum Puritanis 
Anglicanis." In process of time, however, the term Puritan 
was appropriated entirely to separatists from the Church, and 
other names to designate the same body succeeded this. " It 
now appeared," say Bogue and Bennett, "that there were some 
who wished to make the church of England the half-way house 
of the reformation, while others were for gonig all the lengths to 
which the Scriptures might lead. Hence the latter party, who 
pleaded for a church more pure from all the corruptions of pope- 



49 

vy, were denominated puritans ; when the act of uniformity was 
passed, in the reign of Charles the second, they were called non- 
conformists ; and at the revolution they obtained, from the tol- 
eration act, the title of dissenters. Hooper, bishop of Gloces- 
ter, who was burnt alive as a martyr for the protestant religion 
under queen Mary, was the first puritan or dissenter." Histo- 
ry of Dissenters, I, 49. See Neal's Hist, of Neio England, 
ch. II, Peirce's Vindicatioii of the Dissenters, Part I, and Bur- 
net's Hist, of the Reformation. Part III. 

E. 

Brown and Robinson seem to have differed not bo much in 
principles, as in spirit. Robinson has been called "the Father 
of the Independents;" but Brown had before him zealously in- 
culcated the principles of the Independents. They both main- 
tained the equality and " independence of churches, the right of 
the brethren to elect and invest with office their minister with- 
out the sanction of ecclesiastical governors, and in general those 
views with regard to the nature and power of churches, which 
rendered the Brownists so odious to the hierarchy. I am not 
aware that Robinson ever receded in any degree from these 
principles. The difference between the two men was chiefly in 
temper and character. Brown was fiery, rash, and unstable, 
and, as might have been expected, soon deserted his own prin- 
ciples. Robinson was calm, considerate, and steadfast ; and 
therefore though he adhered to his views to the last, yet from 
being at first one of the rigid separatists he became afterwards, 
by intercourse with Dr. Ames whom he found in Holland, much 
more mild and lenient with regard to other churches, — insomuch 
as to give great offence to the violent Brownists who stigmatized 
him as a Scmi-scparatist. In his Apologia guorundam Chris- 
tianorwn, &c., printed in IG19, and afterwards translated into 
English with the title of " A just and iiecessaiy Apologie of 
certain Christians/' &c., he was more charitable and less for 
separation than in his " Justification of Separation from the 
Church of England, against Mr. Richard Bernard his invective," 
&LC., published in IGIO. Robinson was involved at one time in 
a controversy with one of the brightest ornaments of the English 
church, Hall, afterwards bishop of Norwich. Hall wrote an 
Epistle addressed to him in connexion with John Smith, the 
pastor at Amsterdam, styled the Se-baptist because he baptized 
himself by immersion. This letter was directed to them as 
" ringleaders of the late Separation," and was full of strong and 
earnest expostulation. Robinson replied to it in " An Answer 
to a censorious Epistle," in which he complained of being stig- 
matized by the term ringleader. Hall rejoined in his " Com- 
mon Apology of the Church of England," &c., in which, with 
the contemptuous asperity to which even good men are some- 
times betrayed by the warmth of controversy, he says — " as for 
the title of ringleader, wherewith I styled this pamphleteer, if I 
have given him too much honour in his sect, I am sorry. Per-n 

7 



50 

haps I should have put him (pardon a homely, but, in this sense, 
not unusual word) in the tail of this train. Perhaps I should 
have endorsed my Letter ' To M. Smith, and his Sliadow." — 
So I perceive he was," — See The Works of Joseph Hall, D. D. 
&c., edited by Pratt, vol. VII, p. 171, and vol. IX, p. 401. — 
Little reason had the churchman to speak thus of a man, whose 
talents and learning were such that he was selected to hold a 
public disputation with Episcopius. The maturity, which P^ob- 
inson's charitable and enlarged views at length reached, is 
evinced by those admirable passages, so often quoted, in the 
well known Fast Sermon in July 1020, which justly deserve 
the high praise bestowed upon them by Prince. 

F. 

Foxcroft, pastor of the First Church in Boston, reported it as 
a saying of our Forefathers, that " they esteemed brown bread 
and the Gospel good fare." The severity of their circumstan- 
ces would naturally tend to secure them from idle and corrupt 
self-seekers, from those who might have been tempted to join 
them by the lure of wealth or power. Cushman, in the Epistle 
Dedicatory to his Sermon at Plymouth in 1631, describing the 
sort of men who were wanted for the new settlement, says — " if 
there be any who are content to lay out their estates, spend 
their time, labours, and endeavours for the benefit of them that • 
shall come after, and in desire to further Lhe Gospel among those 
poor Heathens, quietly contenting themselves with such hard- 
ship and difficulties, as by God's Providence shall fall upon 
them, being yet young and in their strength, such men [ would 
advise and encourage to go, for their ends cannot fail them." — 
Yet even then the preacher, it seems, did not think the colo- 
nists exempt from the danger of selfish motives and purposes ; 
for in the Sermon (p. 16) he says — " It is reported, tliat there 
are many men gone to that other plantation in Virginia, which, 
whilst they lived in England, seemed very religious, zealous, and 
coDscionable, and have now lost even the sap of grace and edge 
to all goodness, and are become mere worldlings. This testi- 
mony I believe to be partly true, and amongst many causes of 
it, this self-love is not the least. It is indeed a matter of some 
commendations for a man to remove himself out of a thronged 
place into a wide wilderness, to take in hand so long and dan- 
gerous a journey to be an instrument to carry the Gospel and 
humanity among the brutish heathen ; but there may be many 
goodly shews and glosses, and yet a pad in the straw ; men may 
make a great appearance of respect unto God, and yet but dis- 
semble with him, having their own lusts carrying them : and 
out of doubt, men that have taken in hand hitherto come, out of 
discontentment, in regard of their estates in England ; and aim- 
ing at great matters here, affecting it to be gentlemen, landed 
men, or hoping for office, place, dignity, or fleshly liberty ; let 
the shew be what it will, the substance is naught, and that bird 
of self-love which was hatched at home, if it be not looked to, 



51 

will eat out the life of all grace and goodness ; and thongh men 
have escaped the danger of the sea, and that cruel mortality 
which swept away so many of our loving friends and brethren, 
yet except they purge out this self-love, a worse mischief is pre- 
pared for them." Still it may truly be said of ihose who sus- 
tained the enterprise of the first settlement of New England, 
and infused into it the spirit of devotedness without which it 
would have perished, that— in the language of Stoughton in his 
Election Sermon, — "God sifted a whole nation, that he might 
send a choice grain over into this wilderness." 

G. 

The Edinburgh Review (No. XXV, 1808), in an article on 
Mrs. Hutchinson's Memoirs of the Life of Col. Hutchinson, has 
some excellent remarks on the difference between the charac- 
ter of the earlier Puritans, and that which they acquired after 
the Restoration, when they were a defeated, and degraded par- 
ty^ — a difference which has not been sufficiently considered. — 
*' It is from the wits of that court (the court of Charles the se- 
cond) however, and the writers of that party," says the review- 
er, " that the succeeding and the present agp, have derived their 
notions of the puritans. In reducing these notions to the stand- 
ard of truth, it is not easy to determine how large an allowance 
ought to be made for the exaggerations of party hatred, the per- 
versions of witty malice, and the illusions of habitual superiori- 
ty. It is certain, however, that ridicule, toleration, and luxury 
gradually annihilated the puritans in the higher ranks of socie- 
ty ; and after times seeing their practices and principles exem- 
plified only among the lowest and most illiterate of mankind, 
readily caught the tone of contempt which had been assumed 
by their triumphant enemies, and found no absurdity in believ- 
ing that the base and contemptible beings who were described 
under the name of puritans by the courtiers of Charles II, were 
true representatives of that valiant and conscientious party, which 
once numbered half the gentry of England among its votaries 
and adherents." 

No one, who has read it, can forget the powerful description 
of the puritan character in the same Review, in the splendid arr 
tide on Milton, No. LXXXIV, 1825. 

H. 

Locke's admirable Letters on Toleration first placed the sub- 
ject in a clear light, and on the foundation of great general prin- 
ciples. They have been justly called " the best treatise on re- 
ligious liberty, which has ever appeared since the day that the 
chief priests and captain of the temple, and the Sadducees, com- 
mitted Peter and John to prison for preaching Christ." Locke 
felt obliged to introduce the first Letter to the world in a very 
guarded and cautious manner. It was written while he was 
living as a proscribed man in Holland, and published first in 
Latin with an evidently studied obscurity, on the title page, as 



52 

to its author. Limborch, to whom it was dedicated, disclosed 
the secret to a friend. Locke was much vexed at this, and in a 
Latin letter to Limborch complains of it, as a piece of treachery 
he did not expect in his friend, with a tone of almost angry petu- 
lance, which seems curiously in contrast with the calm and equa- 
ble character of the philosopher. "Nescis," says he, " inquas 
res me conjecisti," and begs Limborch to prevent the further 
circulation of the secret. It is to the honor of Locke that he is 
known to have been dissatisfied with the terms granted in the 
Toleration Act by the new Government after the Revolution, 
and considered them as very inadequate and insufficient. — Lord 
King's Life of John Locke, &c. vol. L p. 291, 327, and vol. II, 
p. 310. 

It would seem as if the sound maxim of Turretin must ap- 
prove itself at once to the common sense of mankind, — " in re- 
bus ad salutem necessariis, unusquisque sibi ipsi Theologus es- 
to." Yet so it is, that men have learned nothing more slowly 
and reluctantly, than to tolerate one another's opinions. On 
this subject they would seem to have supposed, that they were 
absolutely required to renounce those principles of forbearance, 
upon which they vvjre accustomed readily to act in other things, 
— as if a belief different from theirs were an offence against 
God, which they were bound not to pardon. Lord Herbert of 
Cherbury, in his Life (p. 109) tells us that when he was in 
France, " Pere Segnerand, confessor to the king, made a ser- 
mon before his majesty upon the text, that we shou'd forgive 
our enemies, upon which argument having said many good 
things, he at last distinguished forgiveness, and said, we were 
indeed to forgive our enemies, but not the enemies of God, such 
as were hereticks, and particularly those of the religion (i. e. of 
the Protestant faith); and that his majesty, as the Most Chris- 
tian King, ought to extirpate them, wheresoever they cou'd be 
found." Thus it is, that intolerance can practice no cruelty, 
for which sophistry cannot find a shelter in some paltry quibble 
or some miserable distinction. The principles of the Reforma- 
tion ought, from their very nature, to produce a spirit of tolera- 
tion ; and on the whole they unquestionably have progressively 
had this effect, notwithstanding the frequent and lamentable un- 
faithfulness of Protestants to these principles. Voltaire, who 
had no partiality for any form of Christianity to bias his judg- 
ment,' in the £ssai sur Ics Mcciirs remarks, — " Le principe 
d'examen adopte par les Protestants conduisait necessairement 
a la tolerance, au lieu que le principe de I'autorite, point fondar 
Tnentcil de la croyance Romaine, en ecarte non moins neces- 
sairement : enfin I'intolerance des Protestants n'etait qu'un reste 
de papisme, que les priricipes memos sur lesquels la reforme 
etait fondee devaient detruire un jour." But whether Protes- 
tantism can throw off all blame so easily, or can account for all 
its own nitolerancc by calling it " a remnant of popery," may be 
doubted. 

In connexion with this subject, I am reminded of a mistake 



53 

of Hume, who affirms that "even so great a reasoner as Lord 
Bacon thought that uniformity in religion was absolutely neces- 
sary to the support of government, and that no toleration could 
with safety be given to sectaries." For this assertion he refers 
to the essay De imitate ecclesia;. Now that Essay does by no 
means warrant so broad an inference, as any one may see by an 
examination of it. It contains indeed exceptionable expres- 
sions, but it is manifestly not a plea for intolerance ; and Bacon 
closes it by quoting with approbation from one of the Fathers 
the remark, *' that those which held and persuaded pressure of 
consciences, were commonly interested therein themselves for 
their own ends." 

The noble stand which Roger Williams, at so early a period, 
took in favor of the broadest principles of toleration, does great 
honor to his memory. 

I. 

The account of the sufferings, wanderings and adventures of 
the pilgrims, when they arrived on these shores, is given in a 
manner extremely interesting from its primitive simplicity and 
minuteness by Mourt in his " Relation or Journal of the Begin- 
ning and Proceedings of the English Plantation settled at Plim- 
oth in New England," &c., published in London 102:2, and in 
Winslow's " Good Newes from New England ; or a True Re- 
lation of things very remarkable at the Plantation of Plimoth," 
&c., published in London 1624. The disjointed manner, in 
which these Relations were published by our Historical Socie- 
ty, owing to the circumstance that the abridgement of them in 
Purchas's Pilgrims was the only authority accessible for a long 
time, is much to be regretted. Coll. of 3Iass. Hist. Sac. \st 
Series, vol. VIII, p. 203 and 239, and 2f/ Series, vol. IX, p. 26 
and 74. The original edition of Mourt's Relation, as well as 
that of Winslow, is now in the Library of Harvard College, in 
which the collection of books and tracts relating to American 
history and antiquities has become very extensive and valuable, 
Morton's New England's Memorial, which has been so greatly 
enriched by the labors of the Hon. John Davis in his very valu- 
able edition of the book, is so familiarly known that it need 
scarcely be mentioned as an authority. 

In connexion with the reference to the Landing of the Fath- 
ers at Plymouth, it may be observed that there is and has been 
an error of one day in the celebration of that event. It is now 
established, I believe, that the difference between O. S. and N. 
S. was but ten days in the 17th century, and consequently that 
the Landing should in strict propriety be commemorated on the 
21st instead of the 22d of December. Dr. Thacher has dis- 
cussed this subject, and given the authorities, in a note to his 
History of Plymouth, p. 25. The error, however, is not of 
much importance. Whether it be sufficiently important to 
induce a change in the day of the celebration, must be left to 
others to judge. 



54 

Notwithstanding the severe hardships attending the situtation 
of the first settlers at Plymouth, I know not what reason Hutch- 
inson had for his doubt, whether, if they had not been encour- 
aged and strengthened by tlie arrival of Endicot at Salem, who 
prepared the way for the settlement of Massachusetts, "the 
plantation would not in a few years have been deserted, and the 
settlers have removed to some more fertile part of America, or, 
which is more probable, have returned to England, where, from 
the change of times, they might have enjoyed civil and religious 
liberty, ior tiie sake of which they first quitted it, in as great a 
latitude as their hearts could wish." Hist, of Mass. vol. II, p. 
420. The most appalling of their difficulties were probably 
over, before Endicot settled at Salem. 

The Rev. Dr. Harris, one of the most learned and thorough 
antiquarians iu our country, insists upon a distinction between 
the Plymouth and the Massachusetts settlers, maintaining that 
the former were " Scpai-atists, and, as respected ecclesiastical 
polity. Independents," while the latter, to whom appropriately 
belonged the name of Puritans, "were only Dissenters, and as 
regarded ecclesiastical polity were Congrcgationalists, and held 
an accordance and union of churches." Memorials of the First 
Church in Dorchester, &c. in tioo Discourses July 4, 1830. — 
Perhaps there was at one time a good foundation for this dis- 
tinction ; but Plutchinson was probably correct in the remark, 
that " the Massachusetts people refined and took the name of 
Congrcgationalists, although it will perhaps be difficult at this 
day to show any material diffi^rence between the churches of 
the two colonies ; for although Plymouth never established by 
act of government the Massachusetts platform, yet in practice 
they seem generally to have conformed to it.'' — Vol. II, p. 415. 

K. 

To the case of our Fathers may be applied the spirit of that 
beautiful passage in which Lord Bacon, at the close of his re- 
view of philosophy, describes himself as having made an attempt 
to tune the instrunients, from which others might produce a full 
and harmonious concert." "Tandem igitur paululum respiran- 
tes, atque ad ea, qua3 priEtervecti sumus, oculos retroflectentes, 
hunc tractatum nostrum non absimilem esse censemus sonis 
illis et pra3ludiis, quje prajtentant musici, dum fides ad modu- 
lationem concinnant ; quae ip3a quidem auribus ingratum quid- 
dam et asperum exhibent; at in causa sunt, ut qua? sequuntur 
omnia sint suaviora ; sic nimirum nos in animum induximus, 
ut in cithara musarum concinnanda, et ad harrnoniam veram 
redigenda, operam navaremus, quo ab aliis postea pulsentur 
chorda) meliore digito aut plectro." Dc Atigmcntis Scientiarum, 
lib. VIII, c. III. 

L. 

Milton, in one of the fine strains of his indignant eloquence, 
mourns over the folly of the English government in driving from 



55 

their country such multitudes of good men and devoted Chiis- 
tians : — " Next, what numbers of faithful and freeborn English- 
men and good Christians, have been constrained to forsake their 
dearest home, their friends and kindred, whom nothing but the 
wide ocean, and the savage deserts of America could hide and 
shelter from the fury of the bishops. O sir, if we could but see 
the shape of our dear mother England, as poets are wont to give 
a personal form to what they please, how would she appear, 
think ye, but in a mourning weed, with ashes upon her head, 
and tears abundantly flowing from her eyes, to behold so many 
of her children exposed at once, and thrust from things of dear- 
est necessity, because their conscience could not assent to things 
which the bishops thought indifferent? What more binding 
than conscience ? What more free than indifferency ? Cruel 
then must that indifferency needs be, that shall violate the strict 
necessity of conscience ! merciless and inhuman that free choice 
and liberty that shall break asunder the bonds of religion ! Let 
the astrologer be dismayed at the portentous blaze of comets, 
and impressions in the air, as foretelling troubles and changes 
to states ; I shall believe there cannot be a more ill-boding sign 
to a nation, God turn the omen from us ! than when the inhabi- 
tants, to avoid insufferable grievances at home, are enforced by 
heaps to forsake their native country." — Of Reformatio7i in 
England, &c. book II. 

M. 

Berkeley's beautiful " Verses on the Prospect of planting 
Arts and Learning in America" (Works, vol. Ill, p. 233) have 
been so often quoted in whole or in part, that it is merely ne- 
cessary to refer to them in this connexion. One of his biogra- 
phers has said of them, that " in them another age, perhaps, will 
acknowledge the old conjunction of the prophetic character 
with that of the poet to have again taken place." 

Bishop Watson, in a letter written to Dr. Falconer in 1804, 
speaking of the probability of new positions to be taken by the 
political powers of the word, gives it as his opinion, " that 
America will become the greatest naval power on the globe, and 
be replenished by migrations of oppressed and discontented peo- 
ple from every part of Europe." — Anecdotes of the Life of Rich- 
ard Watson, loritten by himself, &c. p. 327. 

There is wisdom in cherishing bright hopes of the future ; 
and we should cleave to them till duty or facts forbid us to be 
blind to darker prospects. But it remains yet to be seen, wheth- 
er it shall be the high vocation of our country to realize the 
splendid promise written for her in the following stanzas of an 
English poet, who, with great faults, has many passages of 
striking power and beauty. 

Thetc is a People mighty in its joulli, 

A land bejonil (lie Oceans of (he West, 

Where, though wilh rudest riles, Freedom and Truth 

Are worshipp'd ; from a glorious mothei's hreast, 



56 



Who, since liigli Alheni fell, anioag (he rest 
Sate like the Queen of Nations, bill in woe. 
By inbred uions(ei's outraged and oppressM, 
Turns to her chainless child for succor now, 
It draws the milli of Power in Wisdom's fullest flow. 






That land is like an Eagle, whose young gaze 
Feeds on the noontide bean], whose i^olden plume 
, Floats moveless on Ihe slorni, and in the blaze 

Of sunrise gleams when Karth is wrapt in gloom ; 
An epit.iph of glory for the tomb 
Of murder'd Europe may thy fame be made, 
Great People: as the sands shalt thou become; 
Thy growth is swilt as morn, when night must fade; 
Tlie multitudinous Earth shall sleep beneath thy shade. 

I would fain hope that no conflict of interests or of heated 
passions, in our confederacy, may compel us to read so beauti- 
ful a tribute with the feeling of sadness arising from dark and 
fearful apprehensions. The old Roman maxim was 7ievcr to 
despair of the rcpuhlic; and it is a maxim which we should not 
lightly abandon. 

N. 
This illustration is borrowed from Sprat, who, in speaking of 
the proper manner of imitating the ancients, says — "There are 
two principal ways of preserving the names of those that are 
past ; the one by inctures, the other by children. The pictures 
may be so made, that they may far nearer resemble the origin- 
al, than children do their parents; and yet all mankind choos6 
rather to keep themselves alive by children, than by the other. 
It is best for the philosophers of this age to imitate the ancients 
as their children, to have their blood derived down to tliern, but 
to add a new complexion and life of their own ; — while those 
that endeavour to come near them in every line and feature, 
may rather be called their dead pictures or statues, than their 
genuine offspring." History of the Royal Society of London ^ 
&c. London. 1734. p. 51. 



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